Criminal defence of executives, managers holding delegated authority, legal entities and employees, whether accused or victims, in cases involving workplace accidents, harassment, undeclared work and breaches of health and safety rules.
A serious accident at a company opens two procedures on the same day. The criminal investigation, conducted by the police or the gendarmerie under the authority of the public prosecutor, looks for negligence or a breach of a safety obligation. The labour inspectorate’s investigation, whose report is sent to the prosecutor, looks for breaches of the provisions of the Labour Code. The executive, the management team and witnesses are interviewed within hours, before any analysis of the causes. What is said at that point fixes the chronology the case file will retain.
One feature governs these cases: criminal liability is personal. The employer or its delegate answers for breaches of safety rules “through his personal fault” (Article L. 4741-1 of the Labour Code), and involuntary manslaughter or involuntary injury is assessed in light of the diligence of the person prosecuted. The legal entity is prosecuted alongside that person, not in their place. The executive, the site manager and the safety officer each have a distinct position to defend, which is neither the same as the company’s nor the same as one another’s.
The firm also acts in cases of psychological and sexual harassment, where the criminal complaint, the employment tribunal proceedings and the internal investigation run in parallel on the same facts, and in cases of undeclared work and the unlawful supply of labour, where the criminal penalty is compounded by a reassessment of social security contributions.
Cases are handled in French and in English.
Delegation of authority is the mechanism that shifts criminal liability from the head of the company to the person who actually exercises authority on the ground. No statute organises it: it is a construction of the Criminal Chamber of the Cour de cassation, and it is tested before the criminal court, after the accident, never before.
Three requirements govern its validity. The delegate must have the competence, authority and resources needed to carry out the task entrusted. The delegation must be certain, free of ambiguity and limited to a defined area: a general delegation, which would relieve the executive of everything, has no effect. Finally, it requires the delegate’s acceptance and must be capable of proof; writing is not required by law, but it is indispensable in practice.
Its scope has one constant limit: an executive who personally took part in the offence remains liable, whatever delegation was granted.
What is at stake in the drafting. A delegation drafted without regard to the criminal case it is meant to withstand turns against the person who signed it: a scope that is too broad or too vague, a delegate without a budget or disciplinary power, an organisation chart changed since signature, cascading sub-delegations left undocumented. The firm acts on the drafting and revision of delegations, on how they fit the company’s actual organisation, and on testing them in an exercise conducted from the criminal judge’s point of view.
In the hours following an accident, the executive is heard in two capacities: as the company’s representative, who must organise the accident report, the preservation of the site and the information of employee bodies, and as a person who may have breached a safety obligation. The framework of the interview, as a witness, in a voluntary interview or in police custody, determines the rights available, and it can change in the course of the same day. The question of who, within the organisation, held the competence, authority and resources to enforce the safety rule arises from these first statements; it cannot be rebuilt after the event.
The investigation rests on technical findings: conformity of equipment, the existence and content of the single risk assessment document, employee training, the organisation of delegation. The expert report becomes the central document in the case, and the discussion of its conclusions is a defence issue in its own right. Where a death has occurred, a judicial investigation is frequent, and the civil party claims of relatives, supported by trade unions, shape the debate. The criminal proceedings and the inexcusable fault proceedings before the social security division of the court run in parallel: what is acknowledged before one is raised before the other.
Only if it is valid and the executive did not personally take part in the offence. Its validity is assessed after the facts, in light of the competence, authority and resources actually entrusted to the delegate, not on the basis of the signed document alone.
Yes. Involuntary manslaughter and involuntary injury are attributed to the person whose negligence or breach of a safety obligation contributed to the harm, and offences against safety rules target the employer or its delegate “through his personal fault”. The company’s conviction does not rule out the executive’s.
Yes. The offence of deliberately endangering others punishes exposing another person to an immediate risk of death or serious injury through the manifestly deliberate breach of a specific safety obligation, and offences against the Labour Code are made out by the mere breach observed.
It is sent to the public prosecutor, who decides what action to take. The findings it contains are authoritative until proven otherwise, which makes it the first document to challenge.
By both, often at the same time. The criminal complaint targets the perpetrator; the employment tribunal claim targets the employer on the basis of its safety obligation. Statements gathered in one are produced in the other.
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